Umbraco opens Bristol office to aid UK agencies & enterprise clients
Umbraco has established a UK office in Bristol to support British digital agencies and enterprise clients using its open-source content management system.
This move is intended to reinforce Umbraco's presence in the United Kingdom, where the firm has seen growth in public sector and enterprise adoption of its platform. The company's CMS, which has been open source for twenty years, is among the three most widely used web platforms within the UK public sector. Notable public bodies such as the British Army, Royal Navy, Sheffield Council, and NHS South West Digital Transformation Team utilise Umbraco for their online services.
Market presence
Data from SamsonMay indicates that Umbraco is the leading open source CMS chosen by FTSE 100 companies and one of the top three CMS platforms among the largest UK firms listed on the London Stock Exchange.
The popularity of the platform also extends to membership organisations. According to the Memberwise Digital Excellence Report, Umbraco is the principal platform for medium and large membership-based entities such as the British Medical Association, Chartered Institute of Marketing, and the Institution of Engineering and Technology. These organisations use Umbraco for websites and digital experiences that support member retention, growth, and revenue generation.
Platform and support
Umbraco is supported by a commercial organisation responsible for maintaining the platform's updates, security, and stability. Over the past twenty years, Umbraco has developed a strong following of digital agency partners, as well as a community of more than 250,000 open source contributors.
"Thanks to our highly-professional digital agency partners, we're already well-established in the UK public sector and membership organisations. A number of our partners are now building digital platforms for large enterprise clients and we want to support that momentum with key personnel based in the UK. We've appointed outstanding developers, relationship managers, and salespeople to deliver the technical, commercial and after-sales support expected of a professional organisation serving the enterprise sector."
Umbraco Chief Executive Officer, Mats Persson, provided this comment regarding the company's expansion into the United Kingdom.
Staffing investments
As part of the investment in the UK, Frederik Klerens has been appointed as UK and Ireland Manager and is relocating from Copenhagen to Bristol.
"Bristol provides us with an ideal base that's home to some of Umbraco's largest digital agency partners, one of which, Gibe Digital, hosts the annual Umbraco Spark developer conference in the city. I'm excited to build on these firm foundations and add boots on the ground to ensure that our largest customers have everything they need to continue growing their businesses with Umbraco."
Klerens' appointment is part of a wider recruitment effort. In June, Aaron Green joined as UK Partner Manager and will be based in the Bristol office. The following month, Jacob Howell was named UK Enterprise Partner Manager.
In September, Rick Butterfield joined as Senior Developer, charged with working on Umbraco's commercial add-on products and the core CMS. Butterfield has spent 14 years in web development at UK digital agencies such as Wattle, Nexer Digital, and Shout Digital. He also serves on Umbraco's community Sustainability Team, where he has promoted awareness of the environmental impact of digital services and contributed to the creation of software tools that enable clients to measure and reduce the energy consumed by their websites.
Community and open source
Umbraco's adoption of the open-source model and its global community have played a significant role in the company's prominence. The commercial arm of Umbraco continues to provide updates, support, and resources to ensure that the platform meets the needs of organisations across the public sector, large enterprises, and membership organisations in the UK.
